The home town crowd

St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
Epiphany 4C
2 February 2025

[ video ]

Another week and another awesome set of biblical texts calling us to discern what the Spirit is saying to the church.

As mentioned in the bulletin, for me this is the time of year when I mark the anniversaries of my ordinations: first as a Deacon on 5 February 1978 and then as a Priest on 11 February 1979.

Let me save you the trouble of doing the maths. That is 47 and 46 years respectively.

The Spirit speaks to us—or maybe whispers to us—when we bring our own lived experience into conversation with the great story of faith found in the Bible.

So I engage with the story of Jeremiah in Jerusalem and the story of Jesus in Nazareth through the lens of my own experience as some called into prophetic and priestly ministry, and as someone who is familiar in the streets of both those ancient towns.

The call of Jeremiah is a powerful scene.

Let me paraphrase God’s words as follows:

Since before you were conceived I had a plan for you. Do not try to wriggle out of this calling. Do not claim a lack of experience. Do not be afraid of those to whom I send you to speak. You will sometimes pluck up and destroy, other times you will build and plant, but at all times you will speak my words.

Jeremiah’s vocation took him into a long journey of controversy, imprisonment, hardship and eventually exile. That is way too complex a story for one sermon, but perhaps we can tease it out over several weeks in the Tuesday Bible study group?

Meanwhile, in the Gospel today we have the second part of Luke’s story about Jesus visiting the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. What started so well had turned nasty. By this week’s episode the locals are ready to throw him of the hill on which their village was built. It is a tense scene as Jesus stares down his critics and almost dares them to try. It seems that they blinked. No one laid a hand on Jesus. He passed through their midst and went on his way.

So far as we know, Jesus never went back to Nazareth ever again.

Jesus utters one of those rare sayings found in all four gospels: Truly, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. (Compare: Mark 6:4 & Matthew 13:57; Luke 4:24; and John 4:44 as well as GThomas 31.)

The people who know us best are the toughest audience for our ministry.

That applies to us all, of course. Not just to clergy and messiahs!

Our faithfulness to God’s call may be patchy, but the crowd will never be happy.

You may recall that we saw another echo of that tough truth in Luke’s version of the Beatitudes last week:

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.” [Luke 6:22 & 26]

With that grim reality always in mind, it remains true that a life spent in the ministry of the Church is a life of blessing and great privilege.

Sharing your faith journeys and being invited into your lives is a huge privilege. We dream dreams together, we shed tears together. We celebrate holy, moments, new life and fresh insights into the meaning of life. 

The tough moments are transformed by our shared participation in the grace of God.

So I am glad that in between the tough readings from Jeremiah and Luke, the lectionary committee offers us the great Hymn to Love in 1 Corinthians 13.

That second reading is not just a respite from the challenges of embracing God’s call on our lives. It is also a reminder that even prophets and messiahs—not to mention regular priests—need to act in ways that are loving.

Prophetic speech and powerful actions and are worthless unless they are both motivated and implemented by love.

Now that is a reality check for anyone called into ministry.

Being (in the) right is not enough. We also need to be loving.

Maybe that is our homework this week: to read and reflect on this call to the one thing that matters: love.

St Paul knew a thing or two about tough times in ministry, but he ends with these words:

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. [1 Cor 13:13]